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Age of Conan Expansion Coming In 2009
At the recent Leipzig Games Conference, Funcom developers announced that the first expansion to Age of Conan is planned for a 2009 release. Details about the expansion are sparse, but a significant amount of new areas appear to be in development for that and a free upcoming content patch. Massively points out a video which showcases some of the new content. 1Up has a piece of concept art for the expansion.
Currently LOTRO appears to be the best fantasy themed MMO out there if you're looking for content. They went live in 2007 and had _7_ major content dumps called 'books' while a major expansion is launching this fall. I'd say that sets the industry standard.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'm pretty sure WoW had both functional base stats and an entertaining leveling experience past 20.
Some people may disagree that leveling is entertaining, but even given that, it had a functional and complete experience.
From the Alliance side you had foreshadowing of what would amount to be the uncovering of Onyxia, a rather large dragon, who had ensnared the minds of the leaders of the human capital city of Stormwind. Over a rather... "long" quest chain covering quite a bit of the in-game world, the player was then able to become attuned with the area surrounding Onyxia's Lair, and eventually defeat her in combat.
AoC had (has?) neither functional base stats nor any really functional/remotely entertaining leveling experience past... 20.
Soooo..... you were saying?
Considering that that in WoW, high level zones up to max level were fleshed out with quests and content at launch (as opposed to AoC): Yes, WoW was better when it launched.
WoW had hour long server queues, several days worth of server downtime, lag, instability, exploits left and right. I have seen just as many MMO launches and AoC is in the upper part when it comes to the stability part. There have been no server queues, there have been no extreme server downtimes outside what was scheduled for patching and the client doesn't crash every 5 minutes. What is wrong with AoC is mainly that it's a singleplayer game set online and that it's target audience is the casual player. It's been live now for almost 3 months and the majority of the problems are apparently fixed. What remains is the redesign of teamcontent. Extremely disappointing from my point of view that the team experience is what was left out of the game, but then, the casual player has no time for team-work.
Last time I checked, it's now over 3 months since launch and there are still huge holes in content, NO PVP experience system, bad raid content, no DX10 and a lot of other missing things. All which was advertised on the box.
WoW's problems at launch were mainly due to server capacity. There were bugs, but nothing nearly as bad as AoC's launch. Or the current state of AoC today.
Funcom should try and finish the original game before even thinking about an expansion.
I am both a former WoW and AOC player. I got to level 71 in AOC before I finally called it quits; most of my friends quit a week or two before I did.
The game had a lot of potential, and the hype led me to buy it before I had read the reviews. But the potential to be good is not the same as *actually* being good.
AOC was riddled with bugs and was largely incomplete. Almost every aspect of the game had something wrong with it -- there were zones that were entirely broken (e.g., the Pyramid), character talents that didn't work, and hardware compatibility issues. The crafting, gathering, and siege systems were also largely non-functional, and I'm not sure if gear stats actually did anything.
There were other, more fundamental problems with the game, for me. For example, the zoning system (and load screens) really detracted from the "grandiose" feel. The look of the earlier levels felt fresh & innovative, but the end game was dreary and ill-conceived -- just about every zone from the Field of the Dead onward involved snowy, ice-covered mountains populated by angry humans, serpents, cavemen, and bears.
AOC lacked a certain "magical" feel that WoW had engendered in me. Leveling in WoW was about starting in a tiny corner of a huge world, and over time, coming to realize just how enormous the game world was -- how many different types of landscapes, enemies, and hidden "gems" there were. AOC, on the other hand, felt small -- by level 50, I had visited every outdoor zone, and apart from the aforementioned creature types, there just wasn't that much variety. Sure, it may be true to Howard's lore, but it felt boring nonetheless.
The zones and character design did little to encourage any "emotion" while playing -- while WoW's Duskwood felt "creepy" and Ashenvale felt "alive", AOC simply just ... was. Play-wise, I was never concerned about being ganked by a human player or accidentally running into a mob that was too potent (for my level-appropriate zone) because I was almost always able to run away, even when attacked by characters 10 levels higher. Against same-level mobs, I almost never ran out of mana, and found myself grinding enemies in groups of 6 at a time. The most amusement that I had stemmed from figuring out how many critters I could pull at once without dying.
While it may have been a "smooth" launch for an MMO, it availed itself to be an unpolished, largely unfinished game. I don't like the idea of paying to beta-test other people's software, and found the game to be fairly disappointing.
I won't be partaking in AOC's "ongoing beta", and I doubt that their expansion will be any better. But I may consider WoW's next expansion -- if anything, my experience with AOC has taught me just how well Blizzard play-tests its games.
Holy smokes! You have GOT to be kidding me.
I was in the closed beta of WoW, and I was in the closed beta for AoC. There was a HUGE difference in the feelings both communities had.
In WoW, everyone was stoked about the upcomming release. There were very few bugs, and the only major outstanding issue was that Paladins didn't get a fix to their ability tree until 2 weeks before launch, so it wasn't tested properly. They really needed help at launch. Otherwise, everyone in the CB was glowing with enthusiasm.
In AoC, the fanbois were excited for launch, but everyone else that was able to take a hard look at the game saw that it was deeply flawed. No tradeskilling until level 40? Too much travel with few speedy travel options? Monotonous encouters? Yep, got them covered.
AoC wasn't ready to be launched, as just about every MMO since WoW has come out has suffered through. The big-wigs upstairs know that players will pay for the continuing development of games, so why not get revenue to offset the fixing of bugs and design flaws? So, the rush a game to retail, knowing that a large group of lemmings will pay the initial cost plus a fee to play a beta product.
It's become the norm, not the exception.
As someone else pointed out, most of WoW's flaws were hardware and network infrastructure, not the actual game itself. The game was pretty, functioned on a low level system, and was damn fun to play.
AoC was never that fun to play, bugged out the ass, and required a more powerful system to run, without ever getting DX10 supported. (Even though the box touts it.)